Aller au contenu

Photo

Bug/Balance Fix Priority: Updated for Lamentations.


25 réponses à ce sujet

#1
JaimasOfRaxis

JaimasOfRaxis
  • Members
  • 2 117 messages
In an earlier thread in which I had with Bryan Johnson, I mentioned that there is a prevailing attitude across many communities that BioWare's apparent incapacity/unwillingness/inability (depending on whom you asked) to deal with major issues in a timely fashion was feeding a massive groundswell of negativity that  did not bode well for the metagame writ large.

We just had a patch hit, which, unfortunately, did not address a lot of major concerns.

Priority one: Fixing the Missile Glitch.

All right, look. I get that this is an issue that needed fixing, with varying %s of the playerbase using it depending entirely upon platform. However, this patch has had two direct negative effects:

ONE: Disillusioning a lot of the playerbase who thought that it would actually fix things that have been complained about for several months.
TWO: Adding a few hundred gallons of fuel to the ongoing belief that EA/BioWare care far more about their bottom line than about the actual game, and did this solely to ensure further purchases of Magic Space Points.

No one sane will say that Missile Glitching was not an issue. However, to say that this is the most critical issue the game needed to fix is lunacy, when there's an over-abundance of issues that the game still needs fixed. Moreover, these bugs have been widely documented, and anyone saying otherwise deserves naught but mockery. To the patch's credit, it did supposedly fix the Collector Burst/Detonation Resistance issue, but tests are still ongoing. The thing is, there's a bunch of other issues, just off the top of my head, that MP needed a hell of a lot more than the Missile Glitch being fixed. Here's nine of them, just off the top of my head:



The Geth In General. Stunlock everywhere, and the new Drone and Bomber making it even worse. A lot of veteran players I routinely play with will not willingly fight Geth. Many flagrantly game-breaking issues, such as Hunters firing on you when in stasis/netted/knocked down/flying, Pyros having range far longer than their flame suggests, and Missile Troopers firing multi-round bursts, were introduced in a previous patch, and there's been zero indication that any of this will be fixed. As was well-documented by Sirian, the Geth in their current state - virtually unfightable for many classes - is considered a "Low priority" fix. This is unacceptable.

The Collectors in General. The Collectors are overpowered as hell, even with the fact that they now allegedly take normal damage from combos/bursts/explosions now (tests are ongoing). From the Scion, which until an update could reliably three-shot a  maxed-out durability-specced Krogan or Batarian  on BRONZE (and is still ridiculously powerful even now), to the Praetorian (which reliably shoots through walls and cover, and out its ass), to the Collector Captain (Most powerful non-boss enemy in the game; outdamages a Phantom at range when possessed and spawns Seeker Swarms/Plagues), to the Nuclear Suicide Bombers, the Collectors are monumentally overpowered and widely considered a horrifyingly unfun slog to fight, especially for power-reliant classes.
There's also the little issue of this faction habitually causing the PS3 version to crash.

Assault Rifle Inefficiency. As has been extensively brought up by me and several others, Assault Rifles are the least-efficient weapon class in the entire game as far as power-to-size ratio goes, being reliably out-damaged by literally every other weapon class. By and large, the only Assault Rifles worth using are the Ultra-Rares, with only the Argus, Falcon, Revenant, and Striker truly viable on gold and up for most classes. There's a lot of reasons why this is, but the general gist is that most of the SMG family out-performs the rifle family in terms of damage-per-second and power-to-size ratio. Assault Rifles being underpowered has been extensively brought up, but there's never been a hurry to do anything to improve it beyond incrementalization and token tiny buffs. Meanwhile, we can have the Havoc bricked for almost half of its current lifespan in the game from one balance change.

* Weapons Being More Accurate When Hip-Fired Than When Aimed. Hornet, I'm looking at you, though you are hardly the only guilty party in this swirling fustercluck of silliness. Like the infamous negative recoil glitch earlier on, this makes no sense and is a damning indictment of balance-handling as a whole. In this same vein, special nods must be made towards the Collector Rifle for having a scope far too powerful for its intended purpose.

Sniper Rifle No-Scope Penalty. Garbage. Utter, complete garbage. This is what keeps an enormous number of weapons in the game from being gold viable, because a quarter or more of their damage disappears if they ever don't use the scope. This makes absolutely no sense and has been widely complained-about. An accuracy penalty when hip-firing a rifle makes sense, but a damage-penalty actively penalizes anyone using the Indra, Raptor, Incisor, and  Collector Sniper (which is buggy, too, just for good measure).

* The Spawn Issues.
You damn well know what I'm talking about, because everyone playing this game has now seen it. This was not something that occured before Retaliation, and occurs all the time now: Enemies spawning in plain sight and literally on top of players, often synckilling them, especially during objectives. This is a game-breaking bug and was a major responsible party in a lot of my friends who were otherwise a fan of this game leaving for greener pastures.

* Countless class Bugs.
From the Turian Saboteur being bugged to the gills (Sabotage not effecting any of his own powers, for example), to the Quarian Soldier having bugged health/shield levels, to the N7 Shadow's Shadow Strike not working on Atlases for reasons best-described as DUUUUUHHRRRR,  the list on this one goes on for several pages.

* Pet Power Overnerf/Power Issue.
Retaliation brought us a "fix" that removed targetting priority from all "pets," which meant Drones, Turrets, and Decoys. This "fix" had the effects of completely rendering Decoy an all-but-worthless power except against Geth (where it's simply bad as opposed to useless), killing Drone suicide bomber builds, and giving absolutely nothing in return to any of the pet units.
Frankly, ALL of the Pet powers are now underpowered - the Sentry Turret does paltry damage, has poor survivability and usability above bronze, can't fire more than one weapon at once, has 2 ammo choices that are both buggy (AP ammo won't penetrate things; Cryo ammo has a low proc rate and does not give a damage bonus), and doesn't get damage bonuses for target type for its weapon variants (flamethrower doesn't do bonus damage to armor, for example). The Geth Turret is slightly more useful, but the Flamethrower has the same problems the Sentry Turret's do (also doing less damage), the Geth Turret doesn't get bonus damage to armor and the damage is still pathetic (it also fails to use its own version of the Flamethrower), meaning most players use it as a medi-bot. The Drone's main attack is utter, complete trash and has literally no purpose; all of a CQC drone's damage is coming from Shock and Suicide explosions (which are still weak), not its shock weapon. The Rocket Drone fares better in the current metagame, but it, too, is underpowered. All of the pets need improvements, and until this is done, a lot of the Engineers are going to remain outgunned.

* Sync-Kill Issues.
This has been discussed ad infinitum, but there has never, not once, ever been a post from the Devs about sync-kills aside from the "Magnet Hands" glitch. Everyone and then some has complained about the sync-kill issue: They need some level of preventability, some level of toning down, since they are the cause of literally 80% of all party wipes. None of the synckill-causing units, other than the Atlas, obey their own "alleged" sync-kill "rules," with most enemies with them capable of using them the nanosecond you get within range and even through invulnerability and DR frames, including revives and player spawns. There are incidents of disarmed Phantoms synckilling anyway, cases of Banshees "taking themselves off the map" only to reappear next to players in an inescapable telefrag, and cases of Brutes grabbing players out of Biotic Charges and Havoc Strikes.That the only response so far from  an official source has been to mock it has been especially aggravating, especially considering how this issue has been complained about - literally - since before the game came out.



That's nine right there that were significantly more-important to many players than the Missile Glitch being fixed.  Again, I understand that the prioritizing of the Missile Glitch was probably publisher fiat and had little to do with your own decisions, but the game is suffering specifically due to choices like that. In the future, do yourselves a favor and actively look into what the community is complaining about (and I don't mean useless threads like these). The playerbase will thank you (as will I, for taking away things I can no longer complain about).

Thank you, and god bless.



UPDATE ONE: I'd appreciate that certain parties who shall remain nameless keep the vitriol to a minimum from now on. We already had a massive bit of calling-out in which several users here acted extremely childish, which led to a Dev abandoning the thread. I'd like to continue gathering insight and opinions on things, so I encourage you all to elucidate your thoughts.

UPDATE TWO: As has been confirmed multiple times, the Missile Glitch is alive and well, in spite of the patch. I am saddened, because whilst this fact vindicates a lot of what I said in the original post, I really didn't want to be right for that reason. 

Modifié par JaimasOfRaxis, 06 février 2013 - 05:05 .


#2
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...
We had a way to deal with the Missile Glitch: Report and ban the users of it, just as we do the 6/6/6/6/6 glitch and map glitchers. Was it common as hell? Yes, especially on the PC , but it's nowhere near as critical as other fixes are. That we had literally a half-a-dozen-attempts to fix the Missile Glitch before they finally got it right - and that it was prioritized over other fixes - adds nothing but fuel to the belief that the bottom line is far more important than fixing the game.


Since I already made most of my points known in the thread that you linked.

I am going to comment here, does money come into play with it yes. But not in the way you think it does, let me explain, because you actually covered half of it already.

First off missile glitching was not present most on PC, infact it was fairly uncommon PC.

Second, your bolded part actually is the part I want to make a comment on. Do you think banning people is a free action? It isn't it costs time, and therefore money to investigate claims, to do the actual banning and then the hours of support service that is spent on those that are banned.

If an action that costs 1 dollar will save you 2 dollars it isn't "only thinking about the bottom line" it is being efficient.

#3
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages
@JaimasOfRaxis and @Air Quotes

I decided to make another post since it seems to be another thing directed to me. The posts that I repond to are ones I can directly influence or respond to. Example the acolyte and character cards, I can point directly to the lines of code/config that caused the issue and it can be fixed via a server, I did the investigation and the explanation of the fix, it's easy. 

As I stated in the other thread there are some bugs that won't be fixed, the very commenting of an issue that will not be fixed. We simply do not exist in a vacuum we see issues and acknowledge them internally. Immediately after that thread I posted in another thread basically saying "we are aware of this issue" instantly was barraged with questions like "how did you guys not see this", "when is this going to be fixed", "what about this issue are you ever going to look into it" etc. 

#4
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

Ryu Connor wrote...

Noise from the minority shouldn't be a deterrent or excuse for avoiding meaningful discussion to the greater majority with a spark of intelligence.

I do not shy away from intelligent discussion, I am stating that my very presence tends to be overall a negative response based on that minority. Plus if there was to discuss that would be one thing, the general response would be one of the five following:
1. Thanks we will investigate this issue
2. Thanks we have investigated this issue and determined it is by design
3. We are aware of this and are not fixing it
4. We are aware of this and are fixing it
5. I can not discuss this

I am unsure of what of these will actually generate much intelligent discussion. This is generally because the argument would be made to me, regardless of if i have control to influence them or not. You speak about company culture I would agree to a degree, but generally your community support guy is not even on the team directly and to even comment on things would therefore either be handcuffing the team or lying under some circumstances. Furthermore my particular role is generally confined to option 1 and 2 (which is also persued to PM)

#5
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...
I understand that Bryan's commenting on a thread generally invites a barrage of posts like "How did this slip past QA testing," and I sympathize, but the simple fact of the matter is that it's because of how ME3 is right now. There's a lot in ME3 that shows very questionable design choices (seriously, how could anyone not see the Krysae being an issue) and minimal testing (the barrage of bugs in Retaliation for almost every class), so one is going to get posts like that whether one likes it or not, and it should not be a deterrant from having productive discourse.


There is a certain degree of "what is acceptable" when you get down to a time crunch situation it becomes a question of what is worth it to fix and what is not. Well there might exist bugs like you have mentioned in the Retaliation the question of is there anything that would instantly cause the pack to stop from shipping, one could say that the kits are usable (and people do use them) so it is not a stop ship scenario. Furthermore in that regard it is not a QA problem (which is another problem), the automatic assumption that anything is a bug is simply the fault of a QA missing it. There is a process (I am not directing this at you) called bug triage, where essentially decisions are made about whether bugs are to be fixed or not. 

What you determine to be a stop ship bug and what I determine to be a stop ship bug can be vastly different, as it is a matter of prespective and we are not always going to see eye to eye. In the end though it is a decision that is not going to necessarly be a popular one.

At this time I am going to advocate again to those that haven't to watch the Extra Credits Episode "So you want to be a producer".

The statement of uncaring is one that is an easy blanket to hide behind, because it is one that is very easy to make and examples to show otherwise are just exceptions. Perception, although it may be grounded or not, are one that is very very hard to shake. Case and point this multiplayer, the perception was for a long time that it was about the stupidest decision that would ever be done to the franchise. This perception has changed (mostly through the demo) but the simple fact no matter it is what was said the perception was still there.

#6
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

Ryu Connor wrote...
Even if I have the ratio backwards, that the noise is the majority and the spark of intelligence in the minority, I feel is a task still worth facing.  You're undoubtedly seeing some GIFT issues and to endure that regularly stinks.  I can sympathize with how you feel.

I respectfully disagree with you being a negative, I may not always like the news you bring.  I may not always agree with the choices the team made, but I respect that you were willing to bring them here to us.  Yeah, sometimes the community is unfair and sometimes the community is fair in the lumps it dishes out.  I'm undoubtedly sure that you and the other developers that frequent this forum have at times silently agreed with our vocal disappointment.

Given the fastidiousness of some of the individuals who frequent these forums, your answers might even turn into a handy FAQ.  The theory crafters would totally eat up a more confirmed interaction of bugged, by design, and bad text description.  Personally speaking answers four and five are excellent for me.  Your answers might create a little controversy now and again, but the forums have the means to deal with that through the moderation staff.

As I recall you gave answer six with regard to text based chat for PC.  Yeah, the conversation got a little hot there, but it's not like the flame permanently burned.  We didn't like the answer, it left many perplexed, but we all moved on.  We know where things stand, there's no sense in crying over spilt milk.

Going through the stages of grief (heh) was a better outcome than not knowing at all.  Sure we'd like more robust answers, but hey if wishes were horses beggars would ride.  You are a positive force on this forum even in the event that the answer creates drama.


"I feel it is a task still worth facing" that depends on what the role it is that you decide to play, my role is to report issues to our team internally, I feel I do that. Furthermore the time that I post is normally during my off hours, so I do not believe I should be faulted for what I choose to respond/not respond to (as I sometimes am). 

You may disagree, but there is a certain infinity of when I post things tend to go off topic (less so now that I post more frequently) mind you. But given that threads will turn there entire focus towards what I say, then it almost becomes an obligation that I am to respond. 

Your example of text chat does state that it got a little heated, but didn't burn permanately. I would imagine jumping from issue to issue might also create such heat and although they might not last long, it certainly would be a constant game of out of the fire and into the firing pan. 

Furthermore I am not of a hive mind, I can not possibly be able to follow up on every single issue. While I may be the one who reports issues, I am not necessarly the who follows up on them and finds out their status whether it is investigation/WNF (Will not Fix)/Being fixed etc. Doing so would be outside of the role with which I have been placed in, and thus make me less of an effective employee.

#7
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

rlucht wrote...

I believe all (or at least most of us) understand that bug fixing and testing are processes limited by resources. That said I think what upsets people most is that the tremendous amount of resources that go into bringing out a patch were poured out essentially to deal with one issue.

Hopefully things such as evolutions of characters literally doing nothing, looking at you tech detonation bonuses, are worth fixing or at least creating an alternative evolution for the power.


It all depends on the resources that one would have available, generally patches (regardless of scope) involve QA time and money. Of course depending on the scale programming/designers/qa increase as the size increases. So the variable equation is more Programming*x + Designers*x + QA*x + Cost + QA = Patch resources. 

So if you are say limited in programming resources available then the scale of such a thing is limited, think of it more as a rate determining step. 

#8
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

ValorOfArms777 wrote...

Bryan Johnson wrote...

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...
I understand that Bryan's commenting on a thread generally invites a barrage of posts like "How did this slip past QA testing," and I sympathize, but the simple fact of the matter is that it's because of how ME3 is right now. There's a lot in ME3 that shows very questionable design choices (seriously, how could anyone not see the Krysae being an issue) and minimal testing (the barrage of bugs in Retaliation for almost every class), so one is going to get posts like that whether one likes it or not, and it should not be a deterrant from having productive discourse.


There is a certain degree of "what is acceptable" when you get down to a time crunch situation it becomes a question of what is worth it to fix and what is not. Well there might exist bugs like you have mentioned in the Retaliation the question of is there anything that would instantly cause the pack to stop from shipping, one could say that the kits are usable (and people do use them) so it is not a stop ship scenario. Furthermore in that regard it is not a QA problem (which is another problem), the automatic assumption that anything is a bug is simply the fault of a QA missing it. There is a process (I am not directing this at you) called bug triage, where essentially decisions are made about whether bugs are to be fixed or not. 

What you determine to be a stop ship bug and what I determine to be a stop ship bug can be vastly different, as it is a matter of prespective and we are not always going to see eye to eye. In the end though it is a decision that is not going to necessarly be a popular one.

At this time I am going to advocate again to those that haven't to watch the Extra Credits Episode "So you want to be a producer".

The statement of uncaring is one that is an easy blanket to hide behind, because it is one that is very easy to make and examples to show otherwise are just exceptions. Perception, although it may be grounded or not, are one that is very very hard to shake. Case and point this multiplayer, the perception was for a long time that it was about the stupidest decision that would ever be done to the franchise. This perception has changed (mostly through the demo) but the simple fact no matter it is what was said the perception was still there.


I have a few words here

do your best to all of you whom work on this just noste

most ARs are a tad under the line and are too vaugly close to SMG grade

and the power creep of guns has left soem powers under the line meaning most powers have been a tad lesser than gun use which can be kinda sad

I do nto expect dramatic fixes at all it has to be doen slowly cause of constraints etc. and the way the EA/BW order head off to say what you can and can't do all things have to check mark like a democracy and I know it

the guns I question atm are (thsi does not directly lead to dmg potentials persay but soemthing off kilter for usages of their alignment of difficulty and such alogn with "genral" usability

Snipers-Inscisor,Krysae,Raptor
ARs-Avenger,Phaeston, Vindicator, Striker, Collector Assault Rifle, Geth Plasma Rifle, Revanate
SMGs-Shuriken,Hornet
Shotguns-Katana,Scimitar
Pistols-They seem pretty happy atm though I don't liek the paladins un unqiue setup 

I do wish the paladin was back at 4 shots with a tad less dmg :P cause we have like a TON of 3 shot weapons...it's really kinda gettin old now 



You are strickly speaking in terms of balance and although some guns (I agree) are under powered, they do not have to be gold viable (the usual metric people use). To be fair the majority of players do not even play gold, so those weapons might be perfectly acceptable on the lower (more popular difficulties). For example strictly speaking I (personally) think the Hornet is horribly under powered, yet I know people that can make that gun sing. Yet I think of that list the Striker and CAR are quite good guns on gold.

Modifié par Bryan Johnson, 05 février 2013 - 05:03 .


#9
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

Bryan Johnson wrote...

It all depends on the resources that one would have available, generally patches (regardless of scope) involve QA time and money. Of course depending on the scale programming/designers/qa increase as the size increases. So the variable equation is more Programming*x + Designers*x + QA*x + Cost + QA = Patch resources. 

So if you are say limited in programming resources available then the scale of such a thing is limited, think of it more as a rate determining step. 


An interesting and accurate bit of info, but there is a corollary I'd like to add: there's a lot of things compounding the problems we have already. Dealing with bugs and such is bad already, but literally every update we've had thus far has hinted at being, at best, rushed, and at worst, extremely rushed.

I used to work in the industry. I've seen people get fired for QA failures smaller than the Collector PS3 Crash.

It's one thing to have one reproducable bug to fix, but when you have like eight and then twelve more pop up in an update, that probably has seriously hamstrung things. One has to wonder how much easier things would have been had proper time and resources been allotted to iron out problems from earlier iterations, so as to prevent the dev team from having to deal with them now. Whilst it's impossible to say how much of this is stuff that could/could not have been prevented, it's an interesting thought to entertain, since it certainly would have made the balance team's job a heck of a lot easier.

Please I am curious to hear what the 8-12 issues that came up in the last 2 updates that happened.
I will give you shadow strike for 1.04
I will give you character cards/acolyte in 1.05
I will even give you some strangeness with shieldgate in 1.04

Edit: Keep in mind I dont have my bug database on me at home, I am merely asking because I am curious what was broken in your mind by those patches because there is those that think things that were broken by patches really existed in the ship version of the game.

Modifié par Bryan Johnson, 05 février 2013 - 05:31 .


#10
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

Shadohz wrote...

Bryan have you guys ever just thought about doing a customer-facing bug report?

You know where you list out what bugs you WON'T fix, what you currently addressing, what patch/release version certain bugs were fixed on, current bug status, etc.


When information is duplicated it is very difficult to ensure everything is up to date on both circumstances, furthermore a "slip-up" in the public facing bug report might cause outrage. What I mean is if something is said to be fixed, and then it is determined that is something that will not be done.

#11
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

Bryan Johnson wrote...

Please I am curious to hear what the 8-12 issues that came up in the last 2 updates that happened.
I will give you shadow strike for 1.04
I will give you character cards/acolyte in 1.05
I will even give you some strangeness with shieldgate in 1.04

Edit: Keep in mind I dont have my bug database on me at home, I am merely asking because I am curious what was broken in your mind by those patches because there is those that think things that were broken by patches really existed in the ship version of the game.


I wasn't being literal for that example, but I'll elaborate irregardless. To writ, we had things like Phantoms synckilling despite being disarmed, magnet hands, the vanguard glitch, ULM not working, and the negative ammo glitch going into Resurgence, just to name a few.

Patch 1 hits and now we have bugged Geth Rocket Troopers and Hunters, the emergence of the Missile Glitch (it existed before this, but the patch (and Resurgence thereafter) are when it really started going head-over-teakettle), and the entire Krysae debacle to fix on top of these. It's manifest, where the Devs are still trying to (for the sake of the argument in question) still trying to piece together what the deuce is causing the first batch of bugs, and now they have a lot more. Throw in Resurgence, and now you have the disappearing Pizza bug (for example).


Your example was that the last updates have missed critical issues, which I was most concerned about since I was the QA on those (A bit of selfishness, especially since you were insinuating that I should lose my job).

Vanguard glitch, there was some people that never saw it, it was also something that had multiple causes. Furthermore it had a QA bounty on it, some finds reliable reproduction steps they actually won a prize for it. (someone did because one of the ways to repro it was fixed).

If by bugged Geth Rocket Troopers you are speaking of the rocket double tap, I can assure you that was in base game.

The missile glitch existed since ship what you saw was the propogation of the internet at work, as soon as one person found it and propogated to others is when it took off not the patch itself. Unless you are attempting to indicate that we made it worse by introducing the striker/krysae.

You do not delay DLC while you investigate bugs they are done in parrallel. 

Once again ill bring up the point.

Would you honestly consider any (outside of vanguard glitch because yes I agree that was important) to be a stop ship bug. Please explain why, because another large factor for a QA is bug advocacy. 

Modifié par Bryan Johnson, 05 février 2013 - 06:10 .


#12
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

Bryan Johnson wrote...
You are strickly speaking in terms of balance and although some guns (I agree) are under powered, they do not have to be gold viable (the usual metric people use). To be fair the majority of players do not even play gold, so those weapons might be perfectly acceptable on the lower (more popular difficulties). For example strictly speaking I (personally) think the Hornet is horribly under powered, yet I know people that can make that gun sing. Yet I think of that list the Striker and CAR are quite good guns on gold.


For your information, yes, the Striker is amazing, and it coincides nicely with multiple classes and builds. Human and BF3 Soldier, Destroyer, any Turian class, the list goes on. The CAR, meanwhile, is not; it's underpowered and inefficient, and as someone who's had one since launch day and have labbed the hell out of it, I feel accurate in listing off that opinion. I've been over this in the other thread as well, but suffice to say,  it's not even a marked improvement over the Phaeston, a weapon which is (A) an Uncommon and (B) weighs a lot less. And, as described, the Phaeston, which is dramatically  out-performed by the Tempest and Locust, isn't even a terribly good weapon for what it is.

That said:  There are a number of problems with your viewpoint, but I'll sum them up in bullet point form here.


1. Rarity does not equal power.


In this metagame, we have a number of uncommons that are, simply put, good. The Mattock is one of the best "early" rifles and is Gold-Viable. The Tempest is also Gold-Viable, as is the Locust. We also have an inordinate number of rares that are, likewise, simply put, trash. The Geth Pulse Rifle is non-starter on non-Geth, being reliably beaten at its own game by the Locust and even the Tempest. We even have some garbage Ultra Rares, with the Collector SMG being arguably one of the worst SMGs in the entire metagame. Rarity does not equal power, if it did my Paladin X would be the only pistol I ever use when I currently lament its existence for having the audacity of not being the Talon.

When's the last time you've seen someone use the Disciple?



2. Gold is where the Metagame is.

Putting it simply, every major veteran player (and a huge number of newbies) plays gold and platinum, because this is where the actual challenge is and the actual credits are. If you are putting out weapons specifically geared towards Bronze, then you're not setting up the weapons for the playerbase itself - you're setting it up for an area where the weapon literally can't be used outside of that difficulty without becoming a liability. Want to see where that leads? Take a gander at the number of players who use the Disciple compared to the Claymore, discounting challenges. If you make weapons designed specifically for Bronze and Silver, you're making weapons designed to not be used by players.

Do you know why the Avenger still sees use on Gold and higher, despite low power? Because it weighs virtually nothing, making it a good backup weapon that even a caster can cram on in addition to something else (also for challenge vets). Know why the Mattock is used well into Gold, whilst the Geth Pulse Rifle's a non-starter except on Geth? Because the Mattock can pull its weight there, whilst the Pulse Rifle generally can't. The weapons should be balanced around the Gold Metagame, because that is what most players focus on. That is simple logistics.


3. Variety is the Spice of Mass Effect.

Weapon variety is a key component of Mass Effect. That none of the weapons really handle alike (except the rapid-fire ARs, but we'll get to that) is a major advantage of the game, and frankly, each of them should have a use on the battlefield. The Argus hits like a dump-truck full of Anvils at long range if you can control it, the Incisor shoots three-round bursts as a sniper, the Scorpion shoots proxy mines. The thing is, each of these options should have their own specific use, or there's no point in giving us these choices.

I have never seen a match (nor will I ever), in which a player, with every scrap of sincerity, cried out "Oh, man, the Scimitar would have been the BOMB right now!!" Nor will I ever. This is because it wasn't a very good gun before Earth hit, and it just slid into the dustbin after the Piranha showed up and took its lunch money.

The irony is, this isn't even that hard. It's mostly a manner of tweaking available values. Sure, it'd probably take work and fine-tuning, but really.... Wouldn't you like to see more rifles used than just he Ultra-Rares? Wouldn't you like to see someone genuinely take the Disciple as anything but a stopgap weapon or for the challenge? Wouldn't you like to see players pick up and fire off things like the Geth SMG without them suffering critical existence failure the second you bring them beyond Bronze?


I know I sure would.


1. You are correct rarirty does not equate power, you could easily think of rarity as a lore kind of factor and have that definition completely valid. Also to answer your question, I have used the disciple and CAR (on live stream infact) and done quite well with them. 

2. What if I told you over 75% of matches are still on silver or bronze? What you define as a challenge, what veterans define as a challenge, and what new players define as a challenge could easily be vastly different things. Furthermore a game does not simply revolve around challenge, there are other factors that come into designing games. A gun does not have to be defined by a singular difficulty to make it a unique experience. 

3. Once again you are correct that variety is the spice, but you approach it from an angle of someone who has everything unlocked. I am certain if you saw of the weapon usage stats you would be surprised. 

#13
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

Bryan Johnson wrote...

1. You are correct rarirty does not equate power, you could easily think of rarity as a lore kind of factor and have that definition completely valid. Also to answer your question, I have used the disciple and CAR (on live stream infact) and done quite well with them. 

2. What if I told you over 75% of matches are still on silver or bronze? What you define as a challenge, what veterans define as a challenge, and what new players define as a challenge could easily be vastly different things. Furthermore a game does not simply revolve around challenge, there are other factors that come into designing games. A gun does not have to be defined by a singular difficulty to make it a unique experience. 

3. Once again you are correct that variety is the spice, but you approach it from an angle of someone who has everything unlocked. I am certain if you saw of the weapon usage stats you would be surprised. 


I would, except for one little typo on that. I remember only too-clearly my formative days, when we were fighting on Silver and Bronze to so much as get something worth using and improve the flow of not-garbage. And mind you, this was in the days of endless class cards you can't use. For my early career, my weapon of choice was the Collector Rifle; this persisted until I got my first quality Ultra-Rare: The Sabre (which as of yesterday, is Level X). After that, most of the rest of my armament rusted from disuse until around the time I started getting the better rares, such as the Graal, Carnifex, and Striker. The second that I got a high-level Plasma Shotgun, I started Golding it up, and that was pretty much the end of Silver and Bronze.

A lot of players do Bronze and Silver, but there's a reason for that: Not everyone playing this game got it on day one, and not everyone is dedicated to playing this game relentlessly like us old guards on BSN have a tendency to do. We just got a massive influx of new players courtesy of the Wii version, and the casual crowd makes up a sizable shred of the playerbase. Additionally, Gold can be a horribly unfun slog in the current metagame for the unprepared: You can immediately run into Geth Stunlock or Collector "Lol we're all possessed" in short order, which, paired with the large number and frequent issues involved with synckill units, fosters them saying "screw this" and keeping at lower difficulties, where these annoyances are minimized.

Mark my words, however:  the second the younger players get a high-quality gun they can make use of, their other weapons will fall into disuse. I can guarantee most players who get a Piranha never use a sizable chunk of the shotgun family ever again. I know this because I lived it, and I've seen it countless times from other players.

I am unsure how the omision of having the CAR helps your case (I do think you for your honesty) but the fact that you used it and had fun with it does this not kind of show that power isn't everything kind of arguement is a valid one?

When I quoted you that stat that wasn't including WiiU, every single platform displays this stat and has been fairly consistent in the last 6 months. 

You are certainly correct that players might have guns fall by the wayside over time, but you can't use that as an arguement because if every game was approximately on par people would stay with their crutch the entire time. 

#14
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

Shadohz wrote...
They will most likely shift back to Silver/Gold as more players complete their challenge masteries (Map Mastery specifically lol).

For that statement to be true they would have needed to be the majority to begin with, and silver/gold has never been more popular than bronze/silver

#15
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages
Pretty sure that uncommon weapon mods are in veteran packs ill take a look in the morning. Also the vast majority of things are easier now then they were at launch, the amount of buffs far outweigh the nerfs. Off the top of my head falcon, sabotage, pet "decoys" are the only thing that got needed from base game. But something like gear brought in another thing which made it easier for players.

I know what new players experience I just started up on a fresh account on the ps3 this weekend.

#16
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

Mightyg wrote...

They're definitely not prioritized over consumables in veteran packs. Adding the uncommon gear would also really be helpful i think.

Priortized and present are two different issues. I am going to take it to mean you do not feel the mod drop rate is high enough?

#17
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages
@Mega your post is a little hostile, and you have taken what I said completely out of context. I was stating not all guns are necessarily gold viable and some are designed more for a silver setting and that the lower difficulties are more popular. It does not mean that the higher difficulties are neglected in fact they get more attention despite the amount of people. I play this game a lot myself, I do not find the geth overly difficult, nor collectors personally.The long term longevity of this game you say, well ask a year ago most people here how long they expected multiplayer to be going, I think you find virtually no one that would say a year.

There are also people who believe that the collectors are the most balanced faction in the game.

#18
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages
@Mega leaving aside the comment of hostility we can discuss that via PM if you so wish. What a person deems fun is subjective, there is no set formula for fun. You are also basing the term majority on another means of subjectivity, mainly the BSN.

I personally play gold and platinum

If you look at an earlier post, I talked about perceptions. You offered a binary choice either you care about money and money along or you care about the quality of the product. That is not a binary choice in my mind, there is a balance. Example: weekend challenges have promo weapons, if money was all we cared about we could not have done that and instead charged 5 dollars per upgrade.

Obviously the financial success of EA is an important one to me, because not only does that mean that we are able to release future games and products it also means I can live my life and have a retirement fund.

#19
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

3XT3RM1N4TUS wrote...
There are also people who say that Vindicator is gold worthy weapon if you "deal triple headshot to enemies". No, wait, it was you!

Good to bring that out of left field, did you know a speed run record for gold reapers back in the day was held by someone using a vindicator?

#20
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

3XT3RM1N4TUS wrote...

It was used to apply elemental damage, this argument is invalid.

Hmm AP rounds add elemental damage?

#21
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages
http://m.youtube.com...h?v=JTVftSK3djI

Yah it's back from March 22nd so that is without gear, level IV consumables and without the Drell buff

#22
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

This is pretty much the entire viewpoint I warned about would happen if things were allowed to persist as they have been. The tragedy, of course, is that all of it was preventable.


And what is to be said that those that we are attempting to help wishes to only undermine what it is we do when we attempt to help.

In this thread you have refered to me as "noble Bryan" yet regardless of that I have someones signature that quotes me out of context quite heavily.

For full context
http://social.biowar...7079/1#15797557

Oh and another thing to respond to ray12a
http://social.biowar.../index/14434542

Incase he choose to remove it

The latest patch and DLC are amazing. I haven't put in too much playtime yet to be absolutely certain, but all of my gripes with the game seem to have been adequately addressed. I want to say these updates are worth the wait (and hype), but six months was a pretty substantial wait. Remember that.

Anyway, I believe congratulations are in order. Thank you for turning the MP around for the better. The Volus' roll is the cherry on top.

My only complaint now is the fact that I've been receiving inordinate sums of lvl IV ammo mods despite missing new, rare items. Two days ago, I had everything sans the Typhoon maxed. I dropped 8 million credits on PSPs today, and the first pack (and many others) consisted of two lvl IV ammo mods... Somewhat ridiculous, considering the circumstances.

Any plans to introduce lvl IV variants of the new ammo mods?


So how is it all his gripes were fixed, then we essentially did very little to the game with the exception of the rocket gltich and then suddenly this product is the worst thing that is ever seen?

Modifié par Bryan Johnson, 06 février 2013 - 02:47 .


#23
Bryan Johnson

Bryan Johnson
  • BioWare Employees
  • 4 043 messages
Know what your right, I beleive I shall leave this thread and the forums for a while

Modifié par Bryan Johnson, 06 février 2013 - 03:15 .


#24
NPlewes

NPlewes
  • BioWare Employees
  • 112 messages
rav12a has been removed from the forums. Please do not follow his example. We love hearing from you guys but I will not allow attacks on the team to happen. You're here visiting with us. Be polite!

#25
NPlewes

NPlewes
  • BioWare Employees
  • 112 messages
Ok well this is quickly getting out of hand. Keep it civil guys or this is getting locked.